


An Exploration of Rhythm

by Kaiosea



Category: Infinite (Band), K-pop
Genre: AU, Breakups, Dating, Flashbacks, M/M, Multi-shipping, Very brief sexual activity, relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-07 15:21:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3176727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaiosea/pseuds/Kaiosea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Myungsoo would say that life passes by in snapshots, but Sunggyu’s memories tend to replay like old childhood favorite films, with half the main events left out, and only snippets of dialogue remaining.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Exploration of Rhythm

**Author's Note:**

> This features the Sunggyu/Woohyun pairing but it is also an exploration of Sunggyu's dating life across a number of different relationships. Fair warning that he will also be paired with other Infinite members in this fic.

Myungsoo would say that life passes by in snapshots, but Sunggyu’s memories tend to replay like old childhood favorite films, with half the main events left out, and only snippets of dialogue remaining. 

So he’ll let Myungsoo be in charge of the photo albums for posterity, and Woohyun can handle the smiling business on behalf of everyone, and Sungyeol’ll recite the embarrassing stories by heart since he has the memory of an ancient tortoise. Hoya and Sungjong crowd up the background, blending further into the sepia-toned past with every point-and-shoot, and Dongwoo always has enough snacks for everyone, no matter where on the planet he’s adventuring. 

As for himself, Sunggyu’s moving in with his long-time boyfriend tomorrow, and moving throws the passage of time into such sharp relief that he can’t help but brood. Soon, it’ll all be changing, the pattern of the bedcovers he pulls over his head each night (and now double-sized, to boot) and crunching into someone else’s sink space in the morning toothbrush rush. 

Tomorrow he'll ponder how readily his home becomes an old house and how quickly the new space with its unfamiliar smells becomes their shared living space. In the next month, the quiet toilet flush sound, at first jarring and disconcerting, will become mere background noise to his showers. But for today, a time of packing and uprooting, it’ll be pastwatching that rules his mind. 

Luckily, he’s enlisted all his friends’ help, privately thinking that it would be nice if he’d try to make more than three friends, especially considering he’s dated two of the three, but such is his life, the count rising, the count lowering, but always settling around three. They’re more than enough for him, maybe too good for him, because when he gets lost in his head and his thoughts, their arms will continue to buoy boxes out the door, and their voices will remind him to “Get with it, Gyu!”

But Sunggyu can rewind and fast-forward through his memories like a cassette tape, all his past relationships omnisciently narrated by himself. 

 

* 

 

The way Sunggyu remembers it, he made sure to warn his first boyfriend. 

They were lounging in bed, since Sunggyu’s parents were gone for the weekend again, which made it the perfect occasion to sneak Woohyun in for some activities their parents would frown upon. 

Half-naked in dirty sheets and pondering whether a headcold would improve the raspy quality of his singing voice, Sunggyu had the urge to break something. Thinking of the future made him feel claustrophobic, and he flinched, drawing Woohyun’s attention. 

Adopting a casual tone, Sunggyu told him plainly, “First love doesn’t last, you know.” 

“We’ll see about that,” Woohyun said, with that easy bravado that everyone mistook for overwhelming confidence. Underneath the sheets he was bare, and Sunggyu saw right through his cheesy grin. 

“I shouldn’t have said that.”

“First of all, you’re wrong, second, who cares?” Woohyun cross-stitched his fingers through Sunggyu’s, which made Sunggyu feel only a tiny bit like the evil Grinch when his heart swelled up two sizes too big. 

He was in high school. Who wouldn’t fall for lines like that? 

“I’m serious though. You know my parents took us to a fortune teller on my birthday last year?”

“What…”

“They read my love horoscope, or some shit. Said it would be true love on the seventh time.”

“The seventh time you do what?” Woohyun slid his leg between Sunggyu’s and offered him an innocent grin and a less innocent proposal. 

Sunggyu swatted him. “Not like that. Pervert,” he added for good measure, but he climbed awkwardly on top of his boyfriend to remake a few vows. 

Woohyun was loud in bed, and very generous with feedback, all of which Sunggyu appreciated in more ways than one. He got loudest when Sunggyu played with the wet head of his cock, smearing precum around the tip. When Woohyun came he tipped his neck back and Sunggyu, breathing hard post-orgasm, bit at his throat, feeling a bit more possessive than he was comfortable with when he looked over the bloomed bruise a few days later. 

Woohyun had dreams larger than Sunggyu’s entire life; for Woohyun, the world brimmed open wide at his touch. 

They had a terrible and messy breakup, prompted by their partings for universities at opposite ends of the country. He got through his first semester with his favorite band’s first album on repeat, familiar sounds spinning him through his hurt. 

 

*

 

Woohyun lifts the heaviest box, deceptively small but full of books. Sunggyu knows him to the bone, knows he’ll drop it or pilfer it off on someone else before it reaches the truck waiting outside. 

“I’ll take these three,” Dongwoo says. Sunggyu admires his arms, how they can probably carry twice the number Sunggyu can. He’s lucky that Dongwoo’s in town for this. 

Sungyeol shouts up through the window. “Oi! Hurry it up. This one’s almost full, we’ll finish loading, and me and Myungsoo can drive it over and come back.” 

“Myungsoo and I,” Sunggyu yells back. Can’t resist a grammatical correction.

 

*

 

After Woohyun the pendulum had swung the other way, and he dated someone who was Woohyun’s complete opposite. 

They met at the office, where they worked side-by-side in their neat cubicles; he doubted they would’ve talked if not for the proximity. They just weren’t those kinds of people; not then, and Sunggyu still wasn’t outgoing now, though he’d lost track of Hoya over the years. At the time, he’d felt that work and business formed his haven, and love was hardly a playground. 

He doesn’t have many photos of them together, because neither of them liked to have their pictures taken, and they both were too shy to admit they wanted a few keepsakes. Hoya had a no-nonsense attitude, a way of vehemently attacking mundane work projects, and a passion for lame jokes. 

They didn’t like to say heartfelt things to each other, but Hoya gave him a prettily-written letter on Valentine’s Day that he secretly treasured and hid away in a box until he forgot to read it even every now and then, and it got mildewy and thrown away, and he forgot it had existed. 

Eventually, there was such a void between the words they ached to say to each other, between the gestures they trembled to make, and between the compromises they refused to offer. 

It was a quiet breakup, but they were both quiet people. 

 

*

 

Myungsoo and Sungyeol are gone with the truck, laying boxes inside Sunggyu’s new abode. Dongwoo’s on a coffee run for the love of all things precious and dear, like Sunggyu’s patience. 

It’s pretty funny, finding some of Woohyun’s old clothes in the dark remnants of his closet during the final check. Just an old T-Shirt and some cargo pants are enough to bring it rushing back. 

“Just like old times, right?” Woohyun comments. 

“Look at this ugly stuff. I can’t believe you used to wear this.”

“You wore a choker in high school, you’ve got nothing on me.”

“You want them?” Sunggyu asks. 

“Nah. They’re really out of fashion.”

 

*

 

His third relationship was a mess from beginning to end. But in the way a tornado might be glamorous if you could stand in the eye of the storm, his brief glimpses at true beauty through his third boyfriend’s presence linger in the softer touches of memories. 

Someone had dragged Sunggyu to the one casino in town for his birthday despite his best protests. 

Once he was there, he could not take his eyes off the dealer at the corner table. 

But by the time he had grown courageous enough to stroll over and sit, the dealer was standing up at his swiveling chair, with slim fingers patting the cards into a neat rectangular prism.

“Sorry. I’m about to leave for the night, soon.”

Sunggyu had forgotten. Why did the dealer stay, again?

“Play a few rounds first,” Woohyun interjected casually. That’s right, he was friends with Woohyun again by this time, though awkwardness still invaded when they were alone, and it was Woohyun’s idea to gamble and Woohyun’s intent to help Sunggyu go home with this dealer, for some reason. 

“I suppose I could stay,” the dealer said, looking as if he really couldn’t care either way, with his turned up nose and magnetic eyes. 

His deft fingers, tipped with perfectly groomed nails, flicked the cards out fast as lightning. 

“Call?” The dealer asked smoothly.

Sunggyu swallowed hard. “Yeah. I’ll call.”

He extravagantly had a few more drinks, losing and gaining money, before he was brazen enough to invite the dealer, whose name was Sungjong, up to his single hotel room.

“I’ll come up in twenty minutes,” came Sungjong’s cool voice. 

Woohyun folded early and Sunggyu never asked if he too had gone upstairs with someone. 

Once he’d keyed into the room, Sunggyu showered, trying not to get his hair too wet. 

There was no need to drape himself over the covers like a platter to be served, but he might as well have been naked on a hotel room bed to someone whose eyes could laser right through hhim. 

Sungjong’s perfectly coiffed hair looked even better all mussed up. 

“You’re beautiful,” Sunggyu blurted, after they had relaxed and were sinking into the sheets. These things he would never say about Hoya spilled to the surface of the encounter, wayward compliments and soothing caresses. 

He wasn’t the sort to have done this in the first place, but he wanted to see him again. 

“I’d like that,” Sungjong said, looking him in the eye but not changing his facial expression. Sunggyu felt he was saying it in the tone of “I might as well.”

And sure enough, their breakup came not a few months later, with both spitting accusations. 

“I can tell if someone really wants to be with me, and you don’t.” 

Sunggyu felt he hadn’t been good enough from the beginning, like he could never measure up to his boyfriend, but it turned out Sungjong felt the same. 

 

*

 

The pendulum swung, and Sunggyu found himself dating a real chump, a dork with a penchant for extreme sports that forced Sunggyu out of the comfort zone of his squished couch. 

Dongwoo was alternately loud and quiet, public and private. He had a laugh for hours and a heart for miles, and he could lift Sunggyu over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Sunggyu didn’t let him do that too often. 

Sometimes it seemed like Dongwoo got along with everyone, which was difficult since Sunggyu typically got along with a small proportion of the population. Sometimes it felt like Dongwoo looked at him as another challenge

Of course he liked Dongwoo, and he felt comfortable expressing it, but sometimes he pondered how it would have gone, if he’d met Hoya again before Dongwoo. He had no idea where Hoya was anymore, hopefully headed off for brighter attractions, but it was a study in contrasts. Hoya had run hot under his touch, and he’d throw the covers off while they slept. It had annoyed him at the time. 

His stomach lacked a guilty itch, and Sunggyu wasn’t sure how he felt. He didn’t like to dwell on things, but sometimes he would tell a joke before he remembered who he’d heard it from or comb his hair to the side before realizing there wasn’t anyone who preferred it that way anymore. 

Dongwoo was narrating an extreme mountain biking race on the television in a loud voice. It was much more entertaining than listening to the regular announcer. Sunggyu found it strange how Dongwoo couldn’t sleep after watching PG-13 horror movies but he liked to jump from dangerous sport to sport, picking up everything hazardous like climbing a mountain with no peak or wanting to hang a riptide. Something like those. 

“Do you have a death wish?” Sunggyu joked. 

Dongwoo dropped his smile for only a second, but Sunggyu peeked through the crack before it closed up again. “Of course not. Nothing like that,” and he threw back his head and laughed. 

Sunggyu’s glad he managed to keep Dongwoo around as a friend.

But when it was all said and done with that relationship, he found Woohyun again. 

 

*

 

It wasn’t as though Woohyun had ever exactly _gone_ anywhere, once they reconnected years after breaking up. They’d met up every now and then, maybe less often if one of them happened to be dating someone, but overall it was a constant in his life. Something he counted on like milk dropping to its lowest price on Tuesday afternoons, or how everyone at his new workplace sneaked a long lunch break the day before the weekend. Woohyun was there, in and out of the sidelines of his relationships and breakups and interim periods of romantic constipation, there to lend his shoulder or his couch or his refrigerator. They were incompatible shopping partners—Woohyun too enthusiastic, Sunggyu too unmotivated, but good at hanging out in other, less public ways.

This evening, they were watching a movie, but Woohyun’s face was tipped towards his, and Sunggyu was looking down at his lap. They sat too close together but couldn’t slot into each other’s sides, like misshapen puzzle pieces. The heat of the summer had them both in shorts, and when they shifted minutely, the knees knocked. Each time, he felt electrified by these miniscule touches. 

There were uninspiring things he wanted to say. All words caught in his throat. 

Woohyun nudged his knee against Sunggyu’s, more deliberately this time. 

“It’s not the right time,” Sunggyu said, swallowing. He was cold and wished for a blanket, but he didn’t want to move away and break the suspended mood of whatever weird moment they were having. 

“What does that mean, ‘right’?” Woohyun asked, uncommonly solemn with barely parted lips and a thickness in his voice. 

They were close enough. Sunggyu drank in his scent, like sweat and warmth and good food, something that couldn’t be bottled down to a straightforward combination of natural or artificial scents. 

They moved almost in tandem, craning their necks forward so suddenly that their noses almost collided. Their mouths fused. 

It was like drinking wine out of a cup that had once held water. 

He found it all too easy to come back again, eyes flickering open and on the long draw-back, there was Woohyun’s familiarly fond smile. When they peeled their T-shirts off, when Sunggyu’s hair tickled Woohyun’s (hairier than he remembered) chest, he felt so strange for a moment, almost out-of-his-body, almost near tears. 

He forgot the strange sadness as soon as he named the feeling, because his senses were on overdrive informing him that what was new here was as delectable as what was old. Sunggyu liked the small pouch of fat he found on Woohyun’s stomach, a far cry from the 6-pack he’d obsessively maintained in high school, and yet the feelings it inspired in him far eclipsed any high school declaration he’d ever made. He couldn’t stop mouthing at how soft his skin felt there, there and everywhere, except on his knees where he’d accumulated some new scars, and on his chin, where he’d acquired a lazier shaving habit. 

He loved each new discovery, an old cartographer returning to craft a new map. 

A few months later, he’d learned everything new too quickly and they were back in the past. 

“Remember when I said, first love doesn’t last?” Sunggyu said, trying to avoid getting water in his mouth and eyes while sharing the shower.

Woohyun soaped up his back. “Do you still not know how to use a loofah?” 

“They’re dumb and unhygienic. I won’t buy it.”

“Why do you have to say dumb shit like that? Can’t you leave it?”

Sunggyu knew what he was referring to. Somehow, the fight progressed fast and incurably, ending up at various points as they moved from the bathroom to the couch to the kitchen. They were still arguing as they walked out the door to grab food.

“Children? I don’t want any dumb children, I can’t even handle your damn dog.”

“Why wouldn’t you like my dog? I’m not asking you to marry me, for god’s sake.”

“Maybe you should.” Sunggyu blurted. “We’re always around each other.”

“No, you can’t ask me that. Not now.”

“I’m not asking, I’m asking you to.”

“That’s the same thing?” Woohyun said. 

“Then just forget about it, I didn’t want to talk about this. Say I wasn’t asking, was I?”

“We’re not dropping this now. I say no. And I probably won’t date you anymore,” Woohyun said, mouth snapping closed after each declaration like a stubborn child. 

 

*

 

The move takes them several days to complete, but with the help of his friends it finishes uneventfully. Sunggyu paid for a group dinner to thank his friends, and they parted ways yawning about getting a good night’s sleep. 

It’s worth it when Sunggyu wakes up next to his last boyfriend and reaches for the ring on the beside table, sliding it on his finger where a sliver of a tan line reveals years of commitment. Marriage isn’t anything to him, an amalgamation of social and historical customs that he’d never thought he’d observe, but it’s something his boyfriend wanted formalized and Sunggyu liked seeing how happy he got. The ring is sparse and pretty so he wears it. He pads out to the kitchen, not bothering to be quiet since his boyfriend sleeps heavily and restfully, and he sets the hot water on for tea.

When he comes back to the bedroom with two steaming mugs, his placid boyfriend is sitting up with a pillow against his back and his hair sticking straight up. He accepts the tea with an unblinking, dazed look and sticks his tongue into the water. 

“You’ll burn yourself again.”

“Too late,” Myungsoo winces. 

They had met in a way so non-spectacular it wasn’t worth telling the story to new friends, and the process of their falling in love was just as commonplace, at least to Sunggyu. 

He wonders what the whole story looks like through Myungsoo’s eyes, as they amble through its writing together, for now.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://kaiosea.tumblr.com)  
>  ao3's been going down, so I hope this posts. I love feedback and will try to respond to all comments- thank you for reading~


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